Grails-inspired framework Griffon gets huge renovation in 0.9.5 RC2

It may seem like a normal maintenance release but the Grails Swing hybrid framework Griffon is making a charge ahead of a first full release.

The Griffon team are proud to announce the latest release of
their Grails-like application framework, Griffon 0.9.5
RC2, making some big power plays ahead of a first
release.

The ties to Grails are proclaimed loudly, as Griffon is the
perfect application framework for creating desktop
applications in the JVM. Groovy is the primary language
of choice so a lot of features appear from the Java alternative.
Built with an MVC architecture, Griffon opts for ‘convention over
configuration’, harnessing the spirit of the Swing Application
Framework (JSR 296), automatic property support and property
binding (inspired by BeansBinding (JSR 295)) and Groovy’s
SwingBuilder also simplifies building multi-threaded
applications.

Griffon 0.9.5-rc2 – “Aquila hastata” brings in
new features such as an offline mode for dependency resolution when
building. When engaged, no external repository will be
queried for dependencies as all dependencies should be resolved
against the current cache. All artifact repositories are strictly
off limits, except local.

Other important additions include an
option to disable the event bus in runtime
(important when in an event storm as Andres Almiray puts
it). MVC groups now have skipping
capabilities so you can skip MVC lifecycle events, as well
as instantiation events. Arguably the biggest change comes in the
form of renamed threading
methods, due to the previous method name confusion.
The old method names are still available but have been marked as
deprecated and will be removed when Griffon 1.0 is
released.

Another big move is the appearance of the
Griffon Artifact
Portal, where you will see additional plugins
for the framework from now. Whilst there are only 11 at the time of
writing (such as Eclipse, Swing and Kotlin support), we can expect
this to expand in the run-up to the full release. A big plus point
for Griffon is its dexterity through offering extensions in plugins
for your other favourite technologies, and providing a hub for your
growing number of contributors is no bad thing when Griffon 1.0 is
nearing.

The release candidate also ships with 5
sample applications which are:

File Viewer - simple demonstration of
creating new MVCGroups.

GroovyEdit - an improved version of
FileViewer that uses custom observable models.

Font Picker - demonstrates form based
data binding.

Greet – a fully featured Griffon application
which is a Twitter client. It shows Joint Java/Groovy compilation,
richer MVCGroup interactions, and network service based data
delivery.

SwingPad – a full featured Griffon
Application, is a scripting console for rendering Groovy
SwingBuilder views.

You can find more details in the release
notes and download the release from Codehaus. We’re liking
some of the stuff coming from the Griffon team, and actually the
Groovy fraternity as a whole. It’s a hectic time for them all, but
we’re sure their efforts will be well rewarded.